The blog will offer purely objective and candid analyses for a better understanding of the events that keep happening and that provide dynamism and direction to the flow of the history and development of the human societies. Being a forum, the comments and opinions from readers whether for or against the views expressed in it, are gratefully welcome. Suggestions for improving the blog are welcome.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Dealing with India

August 9, 2013

By Saeed Qureshi

According to the Times of India’s report dated July 15, a
member of a Special Investigating Team (SIT) of India's Central Bureau of
Investigation had accused incumbent Indian governments of
"orchestrating" the terror attack on Indian Parliament on 13 December
2001 and the 2008 Mumbai attack carried out on 26 November 2008.

There is no apparent reason to discard this bombshell
information disclosed by an Indian secret service operative. Ostensibly the atrocious
aim behind these sinister plots was to project Pakistan as a terrorism
sponsoring state and thus antagonize the international community against it.

India had been maliciously harping upon the bogey that the parliament building and Mumbai attacks carried out by
the disparate militant groups and Ajmal Kasab band respectively, were sponsored
by Pakistan and her intelligence outfits.

This was
not for the first time that India had blamed the Pakistan based radical Islamic
organizations for Mumbai calamity. Earlier, the Kashmiris freedom fighters were
held responsible for the storming the Parliament building in New Delhi in
December 2001. Some other similar attacks were also attributed to the Kashmir
militants.

While India bracketed Pakistan government and
its intelligence agencies as the accomplices in these activities with the
militants, it conveniently forgets that Pakistan has also suffered enormously
at the hands of these brutal radicals who treat India and Pakistan at par. They
carry out suicide bombing and murderous ambushes to punish Pakistan for its
partnership with United States in hunting down the perpetrators of the 9/11
mayhem.

In the
aftermath of the parliament building episode, India demanded the unacceptable
option of carrying out punitive air strikes on the chosen targets in Pakistan.
For a neighbor to ask for such an unusual permission from the United Nations is
as weird as it is lethal to the territorial integrity of a sovereign country.
There seemed to be more than meets the eye in the Indian call for attacking the
militants’ targets within Pakistan.

One would
wonder if the Mumbai bloody melodrama was deliberately enacted to achieve the
concealed yet coveted objective of having a walk over the territory of Pakistan
and Kashmir and to glibly and indiscriminately bomb any place anywhere. In
peace times, this untenable demand was made by India against such a neighbor
that has gone a long way to normalize bilateral relations in all avenues with
her.

At the
behest of India, had Pakistan been subjected to the UN sanctions,
then obviously India would have been free to also curb and crush with full
might, the Kashmiris’ uprising against the Indian occupation, now apace for six
decades. In that situation Pakistan would be severely constrained to use its
army in support of Kashmiris and also to defend its territory from the Indian
onslaughts.

There couldn't be better time for India to achieve this agenda as a
time, when Pakistan army is bogged down for several years on the Western front
and India has become a strategic partner with the United States.

Pakistan
has already been under enormous burgeoning pressure from United States for
using its armed forces to annihilate the radical Islamic militants in the
regions starting from Afghanistan to the extreme periphery of Kashmir.

In the
aftermath of these incidents, the call from India to go for the monstrous
reprisal in the form of military aerial forays against Pakistan would have been
a grievous folly entailing horrific consequences for the region. If India
wanted to exploit the Mumbai attacks to squeeze Pakistan and to label it as a
terrorism sponsor, then it is as brazen as malicious. But now that charade has
exploded on the face of India when her own secret agents are spilling the beans
and when as the proverb goes, “the cat is out of the bag”

India
wants the same leverage and queer rights that Israel is exercising against the
Palestinians, in that she kills, at will, the vulnerable Palestinians
indiscriminately. But is Pakistan what Palestine is?Pakistan
is a sovereign state in existence and a member of the United Nations. The state
of Palestine is yet to appear and take a physical shape.

The kind of rift
between Israel and Palestine is anchored on legitimate demand for the statehood
of an uprooted people. India and Pakistan are already two independent states
resulting from the partition of India via an established international
covenant. The incident of Mumbai is no parallel to the deep rooted and
historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinian nation.

The 9/11
event is also no match to the Mumbai incident. The 9/11 event is a mega sized
act of terrorism and the Mumbai is a much smaller local event. The United
States has not been able to conclusively establish the identities of the 9/11
perpetrators. Similarly the Indian government had been far from being candid
and unambiguous about the individuals or backdoor abettors actually responsible
for the Mumbai carnage or attack on the parliament

But the
whole context and narrative of the Indian blame game against Pakistan turns
upside down after the submission of the statement by the Indian secret service
operative in the Indian Supreme Court. It is for the international community to
understand the Indian diabolic designs for staging such clandestine vicious
operations and then putting blame on Pakistan.

An objective
assessment would lead a dispassionate observer to the conclusion that no matter
how much Pakistan stoops low before the Indian conditionalities for peaceful coexistence,
India would not relent in asking for more. The reason is that Pakistan has
always been a thorn in the side of India. India displayed its historic animus
towards Pakistan by dismembering the latter in 1971.

Since
1971, Pakistan has remained embarked upon a path of reconciliation and
appeasement with India. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took giant leaps to make
friendship with India so much so that the then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee traveled to Lahore in a bus in February 1999. That visit culminated
in the historic Lahore Declaration. The Lahore Declaration spelled out various steps
for normalizing relations between the two nations.

President Pervez Musharraf during his rule of 9
years made every effort to woo India. He is on record of mellowing down and
drastically departing from Pakistan’s traditional stand on Kashmir with regard
to a plebiscite. But India seldom seemed content with these landmark measures although
these were detrimental to Pakistan and to Pervez Musharraf’s personal standing
as a patriotic or nationalist sovereign.

President
Asif Zardari had gone extra mile to break the barriers of acrimony and distrust
between the two neighbors. He outstripped his pro-conciliation predecessors by
declaring Kashmiri insurgents as terrorists and suggesting the elimination of
the boundary line between the two countries. But India does not seem to be content
or convinced that Pakistan can be a friendly country.

It is my
considered opinion that India will not rest till Pakistan disappears from the
world map. India with an enormous goodwill around the world will keep cashing on
the international support to fulfill her agenda of further truncating Pakistan
or reducing its size to the level of the East Punjab. India would keep looking
for opportune time to achieve that sinister objective no matter how docilely
the incumbent Pakistani leadership panders towards her. Unfortunately the
leaders in Pakistan lack an emphatic commitment and the clear vision to protect
the motherland.

The peace formula or overtures from Pakistan cannot
fruitfully or durably work with India as borne out by the futility of such
initiatives in the past. One can imagine how fragile the peace-based relations with
India could be, from the latest incident in which the Indian protesters encircled
and stopped the Lahore-bound Dosti bus in.

The protestors surrounded the bus
and chanted slogans against Pakistan for the alleged killing of Indian troops
at the Line of Control. The bus was coming from New Delhi. It surmises that
even if the inter-governments relations are friendly, the Indian people generally,
are hostile towards Pakistan.

Pakistan
should set a limit to curry favor with India and stop negotiating with India
while lying down. As India is to Pakistan, an irreconcilable hostile country
gets emboldened if not resisted or counterpoised by courage and determination.
If the final clash is to take place then let it be so. Like their predecessors
barring the brief Musharraf’s Kargil fiasco the successive Pakistani leaders in
power have been more focused on extravaganza and puerile frivolities than
serving their bedeviled nation.

It would be
rather plausible if the PMLN comes out of its complacent frame, fantasy and day
dreaming with regard to having friction free bilateral relations with a dagger
in cloak neighbor. The example of gas pipeline project was disrupted and
abandoned by India for extremely flimsy reasons. The underlying reason for that
volte- face was that it would have economically benefited Pakistan in a huge
manner.

If India
is supporting separatist movements in Balochistan why Pakistan cannot do tit
for tat retaliation in India where dozens of such breakaway movements are going
on for decades against the Indian hegemony.

There
cannot be a more sublime cause than to go down fighting for safeguarding the
national honor and territorial integrity.

But if Pakistan surrenders hands down,
history will judge Pakistani leaders as spineless betrayers to a country and a
nation that was carved out with a dogged spirit for freedom despite a combined
opposition and treachery from Indians and the British imperialists.

Let
Pakistan fight on all fronts and fight to the last. To procure peace by
becoming a protégé and a client state of India is ignominious and must be
discarded. It’s time to talk plainly also to the Americans to not drag us too
much in a quagmire that would ultimately devour us as a united country. However
if genuine desire on the part of India for making durable peace with Pakistan
is discernible then there may be no harm in giving such an effort yet another
trial.

About Me

Columnist/Analyst/ Former Diplomat.
After obtaining my master’s degrees in Urdu and English literature from Punjab University, I started my career by teaching in a college. Thereafter, I had a stint in the diplomatic service of Pakistan. Finally I landed in journalism, an occupation that I am wedded to for over 20 years now.
I am a strong believer in a civil society and staunch opponent of exploitation in all forms.